Case Management is for organizations that serve people directly: a food pantry, a shelter, a family services agency, a scholarship program, an after school program. It holds the people you serve, the cases you have open for them, the notes your staff write, and a log of what you actually delivered. That last piece is the one most small organizations are missing when a funder asks what their money bought.
What it is
Five things, and deliberately only five.
- The people you serve. One record per person or household, with as much or as little detail as you need. A record with nothing but a name is a perfectly good record.
- Cases. One case is one piece of work with a beginning and an end. Eviction prevention. Winter heating. A job search. Somebody can have several over the years, and each one keeps its own story.
- Case notes. What happened, what was agreed, what happens next, dated and signed with whoever wrote it.
- The service log. What was delivered, when, how much, under which program, and against which funder.
- Intake requests. What people sent through your public link, waiting for somebody here to accept or decline. Optional, and off unless you turn it on.
Where to find it
It lives at https://aio-staging-site.pages.dev/case-management/ and on your organization's dashboard at https://aio-staging-site.pages.dev. There is a public demonstration with invented records at https://aio-staging-site.pages.dev/case-management/?demo=1, which needs no account and touches no real data.
Who can open it
This app is held tighter than every other app on the platform, on purpose.
Everywhere else, anyone in your organization can read and only the read-only Viewer role is stopped from writing. Here, being a member of your organization is not enough to read anything at all. Case notes describe somebody's housing, family or health situation, and that is not the same category of information as a donation record.
| Who | Can open Case Management |
|---|---|
| The organization's owner | Yes |
| A member you have marked as Admin | Yes |
| A member whose custom access list names Case Management | Yes |
| A member with full access to everything else | No, until you add it deliberately |
| A member with a preset role such as Programs or Operations | No, until you add it deliberately |
| The read-only Viewer role | No, not even to read |
To give somebody access, open My Organization, find them under People and Access, set their access to Custom, and tick Case Management. That is one deliberate action per person, which is the point.
Letting somebody in is the first decision. Which cases they then see is a second one, and it has its own setting.
Who can open which case
There are two modes, and an owner or an admin chooses between them on Case Management Settings. The setting is theirs alone: a permission the person it restricts can switch off is not a permission.
| Mode | What a caseworker sees |
|---|---|
| Everyone admitted to this app sees every case (the default) | Every case, every person on file, every service record. Assigning a case records who is responsible; it hides nothing. |
| A caseworker sees only their own cases | The cases assigned to them, plus any single case they have been added to. Everything else, including the people attached to it and the services logged against it, is not on their screen at all. |
An owner and an admin see everything in either mode. That is deliberate: somebody has to be able to answer for the whole file, and somebody has to be able to pick up a case when a caseworker leaves.
Restricted mode is off unless you turn it on, so nothing changes for an organization that never opens this setting. If you do turn it on, every screen that shows a shorter list says so plainly rather than presenting a partial list as the whole one.
Adding one person to one case
In restricted mode, every case grows a Who else is on this case card. An owner or an admin can add a colleague there, which lets them open that one case and nothing else. It is the answer to "my supervisor needs to see the Vega file" without handing over the cabinet.
Only an owner or an admin can add somebody. If a restricted caseworker could add people to a case, they could add themselves to every case, and the mode would be decoration.
A note only some people can read
Every note has a Keep this note restricted box. A restricted note can be read by the person who wrote it, and by an owner or an admin. Nobody else, including the caseworker the case is assigned to.
That is stricter than it first sounds, and it is the right shape: the reason to write a restricted note is usually something one worker was told in confidence, and "everybody on the case can read it" would defeat the purpose. A restricted note carries a gray Restricted tag so the person who can read it is never in doubt about who else can.
Somebody who cannot read a restricted note is not told it exists. It is left out of the case, out of the note count, and out of the "last note" date, because a date on its own would advertise it.
A public link people can ask for help through
Off unless you turn it on. When it is on, your organization has one link you can print on a flyer, put on your website, or hand to a partner agency, and anyone can use it to describe what they need. There is no account and no sign-in: somebody asking a nonprofit for help should never have to become a user of a software platform first.
Turn it on under Case Management Settings, where you will also find the link itself and a box for a short introduction. Write who you serve and what happens next, in your own words. "We serve Palm Beach County. Somebody will call you within two business days" saves a great many wasted requests and a great many disappointed people.
Nothing they send becomes a record on its own
Every submission lands in Intake Requests and waits. It is not a person on file. It is not a case. It does not appear in any count, any report or any export. Somebody here reads it and decides.
- Accept creates the person and a case, and puts what they wrote on the case as its first note, in their own words. If they are already on file you attach it to the existing record instead of creating a second one.
- Decline keeps the request and your reason. Nothing is sent to the person automatically; declining is a record for you, not a message to them. That record is the part your organization has to be able to answer for later, which is why declining is not the same as deleting.
- Delete is an owner or admin decision and erases the request outright, the person's words with it.
The form asks for a name, what they need, and one way to reach them. Everything else is optional, because a form that demands an address from somebody who does not have one is a form that stops the people who most need it. It carries the same line about medical details that the rest of the app does.
You are emailed when a request arrives, so a queue nobody opens does not become a week of silence.
What must not go in it
All In One Nonprofit is not a HIPAA business associate and does not sign business associate agreements. Do not enter protected health information here: no diagnoses, no treatment records, no clinical notes, no medication lists. This holds even though the app has a place to type a note, and it holds even if your organization is otherwise careful, because the obligation is ours as well as yours and we have not taken it on.
What belongs in a note is what your organization did and what the person needs from you. "Referred to the county clinic and confirmed the appointment" is fine. The contents of that appointment is not.
The same line appears on the screens where you type, not only here, because a policy page nobody opens is not a control. Our privacy policy is at https://aio-staging-site.pages.dev/privacy.html and our data retention page at https://aio-staging-site.pages.dev/data-retention.html.
The word for the people you serve
Not every organization says "clients". A school program says students. A membership organization says members. A family services agency often says families. Open Case Management Settings and pick the word that fits, from Clients, Participants, Members, Students or Families. The sidebar, the headings and the labels all change to match.
Only the words you read change. Your saved records, the column names underneath and the CSV export keep their standard names, so a report you built last year still lines up with one you build today. That is the same rule the rest of the platform follows for organization vocabulary.
The same screen holds four lists worth filling in early: your programs, your funders, the services you deliver, and the units you count them in. They fill the dropdowns everywhere else, and they are what makes the Service Log filter the way a grant report asks.
The dashboard
The screen the app opens on, and it is built to answer one question: what needs attention today.
- Open cases and waiting on something, side by side, so a queue that is really a pile of things blocked on somebody else is visible as such.
- Active people, counting only records you have not set to inactive.
- Services logged this month, which is the honest early warning that logging has slipped.
- Open with no note in 30 days, in red when it is not zero. See cases that go quiet.
- Recently touched, the last handful of cases anyone changed, so you can pick up where the team left off.
Adding someone
Sidebar, Add a Client (or whatever word you chose). Only the name is required. Everything else is optional, including the email address.
Household size is worth filling in if you serve families, because most funders count people reached rather than records created, and a household of six is six people.
Set somebody to Inactive rather than deleting them when they move away or stop coming. Deleting removes the history; inactive keeps it out of your working list while leaving last year's numbers intact. The app will refuse to delete anybody who still has a case attached, for that reason.
Opening a case
Sidebar, Add a Case, or the "Open a new case" button on somebody's record.
A case is one piece of work with a beginning and an end. If somebody comes back next year for something different, open a second case rather than reopening the first. Two clean cases tell a truer story than one that ran for three years, and they count correctly.
| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Short title | What this case is about, in a few words. "Eviction prevention", not "Housing". |
| Program | The stream of work it belongs to. Fill your list in Settings first and this becomes a pick list. |
| Status | Open means somebody is working it. Waiting on something means the next move is not yours. Closed means it ended. |
| Priority | Low, normal, high, urgent. Urgent and high show as a badge in the list, the rest stay quiet. |
| Assigned to | Who is responsible. A label, not a lock: it does not restrict who can read the case. |
| What they came for | The presenting need, in their words where you can. It is what a colleague picking this up cold needs first, and it is often not what the case turns out to be about. |
Case notes
Open a case and the note box is the first thing under the case details. Pick what kind of contact it was, check the date, and write.
Notes are a record of what happened, so they are not freely erasable. Whoever wrote a note can take it back within a day, which covers a genuine mistake. After that the correction is a new note saying what was wrong and what is right. That is what an auditor, a funder or a court would expect to see, and it is why the app works this way rather than letting anyone quietly rewrite the past.
The service log
Under the notes on every case there is a service log. Each entry is one thing you delivered: what it was, the date, how much, the unit you count it in, the program it sat under, and the funder paying for it.
Record it even when it feels obvious. "Case management, 1.5 hours" feels like it does not need writing down until the day somebody asks how many hours of case management your organization delivered last year, and the honest answer is that nobody knows.
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| What was provided | Your own list of services, set in Settings. Keep it short. Twelve services you use beats forty you do not. |
| How much and counted in | The number and its unit: 42 meals, 1.5 hours, 6 nights, 180 dollars. Pick the unit your funders ask for, not the one that is easiest to count. |
| Program | Fills itself from the case, and you can change it for a one-off. |
| Funder | Optional, and the single highest-value field in the app. Tagging services with the funder paying for them is what turns this log into a grant report you can hand over without rebuilding it. |
Assistance: paying a provider
Every case has an Assistance section for organizations that pay a bill on somebody's behalf: a veterinary hospital, a landlord, a utility, a clinic. Press Record assistance and fill in whatever applies. Every field is optional, so an organization that never pays anybody can ignore the section.
| Field | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Total cost or estimate | The whole bill or the provider's estimate, before anybody pays anything. |
| Amount requested | What the person asked your organization to cover. |
| Amount approved | What your organization agreed to pay. |
| Other contributions | What others put in, such as the family, insurance or another organization, and who they were. |
| Paid to | The provider your organization paid. |
| Invoice received | Tick it when the provider's invoice arrives. Attach the invoice itself under Case files. |
| Paid directly to the provider | Tick it when the money went to the provider and not to the person. Funders often ask about this. |
| Amount paid, date and reference | What actually went out, when, and the check number or payment reference. |
When there is a total and at least one contribution, the section works out whether the bill is fully covered or how much is still uncovered. Record the payment itself in Finances as well, with the invoice attached, so your books and the case agree.
Case files
Invoices, estimates, receipts, eligibility papers and photos can be attached to the case itself, the same way a receipt attaches to a transaction in Finances. Open the case, choose the file under Case files, say what it is, and press Attach to this case. Each file can be up to 25 MB, and case files count toward your organization's storage allowance.
Case files are private to the case. They do not appear in the Document Library. Only the people who can open the case can see or download them: an owner, an admin, and the caseworkers your visibility setting lets open it. The person who attached a file can remove it, and so can an owner or an admin. Deleting a case deletes its files too, and the app warns you first.
Funded services: teens in therapy and other paid-over-time help
Some organizations pay a provider for somebody over many sessions: a therapist for a teenager, a tutor, rent in installments. Turn on Use funded services in Case Management Settings and choose who you pay (Provider, Therapist, Tutor, Counselor, Landlord or Vendor). Turning it on also switches case visibility to assigned, so each case is open only to the caseworker it is assigned to, plus owners and admins. You can change that back in the same settings.
Someone under 18
Tick Under 18 on the person's record. We keep the young person's first name and last initial only, with age or grade, and a full name is shortened when you save. Their own email, phone, address and date of birth are not kept; the parent or guardian carries the contact details. Record the guardian's consent to the program and to your organization talking with the provider about scheduling and payment, with the date, and upload the signed form to the case as a Consent form. Have your counsel review the consent form before the first real record. We are not lawyers.
The session plan
On the case, Set up the plan: the provider, their usual fee, the reduced fee they agreed to, what the family pays and what you pay per session, and how many sessions you approved. The plan works out the total. For example, 12 sessions at a fee reduced from $150 to $100, with the family paying $25 and your organization $75, commits $900. Pick the fund the payments come from, and the funder for your reports.
Paying the provider
Record a payment for each invoice: the date, sessions covered, amount, invoice number, check number and the invoice file. Saving also records the payment once as an expense in Finances, from the fund on the plan, so there is nothing to enter twice. If somebody corrects the amount or date in Finances, the case shows the corrected figure. Removing the payment on the case removes its Finances entry too. The case shows sessions used and left, and money paid and left.
Your providers
The Providers page (named for the word you chose) lists everyone you pay: practice, license, fees, check details and the signed agreement. It shows what you paid each one this year and last year. A person or sole practice paid at or above the IRS reporting threshold is flagged Review for 1099: $600 for payments through 2025 and $2,000 for payments made after December 31, 2025. The flag is a reminder for your accountant, who decides.
Alerts and the report
The dashboard lists cases close to their approved sessions and open cases with no invoice paid in 30 days. Owners and admins get the Funded Services Report: people served (and how many are under 18), sessions funded, dollars paid, average cost per session, and totals by provider, funder and fund, ready for a grant report or Impact and Outcomes.
Intake for a young person
With funded services on, your public intake form asks whether the request is for someone under 18. A parent or guardian then gives the young person's first name and last initial, age or grade, their own name and relationship, and the two consents. The email and phone on the form are the guardian's.
Downloading every case record
An owner or an admin sees a Download all case records button on the Cases screen. It downloads one zip containing spreadsheets of everybody you serve, every case (including the Assistance amounts), every note (including restricted notes), every service, intake requests, a list of case files, and the case files themselves in one folder per case. Nobody else sees the button, and the server refuses the download for anybody who is not an owner or an admin.
The organization-wide export on the My Organization page includes Case Management too.
Another system reading and adding cases (September 25, 2026)
If your organization runs a CRM or a case system alongside this one, it can read and add the people you serve, cases, case notes and services here without anybody signing in as a person. On AIONP Essentials and AIONP Complete, an owner or an admin creates a key on the API keys and webhooks card on My Organization, ticking only what the other system may do: Read the people you serve (Case Management), Add and update the people you serve, Read cases and the service log, Open and update cases, record services, Read and add case notes (never confidential ones) and Read who can sign in. The key is shown once and can be revoked at any time. The technical reference for whoever sets it up is at https://aio-staging-site.pages.dev/api/v1/openapi.json.
Because this app is held tighter than the others, know what a key can and cannot do before you grant it:
- A key reads every case, whatever the Who can open which case setting says, because the owner or admin who created it could. Grant Read cases and the service log only to a system you would show every case to.
- A note marked confidential never leaves. It is not returned to a key and is never sent to a webhook, from the API or from the app.
- Someone under 18 stays protected. A minor added through a key is kept as a first name and last initial with the guardian's details, the same as one added on the screen, and is returned that way.
- Notes are added, never edited or deleted. A correction is a new note. Nothing at all is deleted through the API, and the Assistance amounts on a case can be read but not changed.
- Every write is in your Activity log under the key's name, and a note a key adds shows that name as its author.
Under the same card, Add a webhook sends the other system a signed message the moment A person you serve is added (Case Management), A person you serve is updated, A case is opened, A case is updated, A case note is written (never a confidential one) or A service is recorded on a case, whether the change came from the screen or from the API. Send a test event proves the address before a real case does, and Recent deliveries shows the last twenty messages. Connecting other software is not part of the Launch Plan.
Building a grant report
Sidebar, Service Log. Set the dates the report covers, pick the funder, and press Show. You get the number of service records, the number of people served, totals by service, totals by program, and every underlying row.
Export as CSV gives you the rows as a spreadsheet, ready to paste into a report or attach to it. The export uses the standard column names rather than your chosen vocabulary, so a funder reading it needs no explanation of your house language.
A working pattern for the end of a grant year:
- Filter to the funder and the grant period.
- Read the people served figure. That is your unduplicated count of people who received something under that filter.
- Read the totals by service. That is your outputs table, already added up.
- Export the CSV and keep it with the report as your evidence file.
Cases that go quiet
The dashboard counts open cases with no note in the last thirty days, and the Cases list badges them. That is usually the case nobody picked back up rather than a case that is going well. Work down from the oldest note.
Closing a case
Open the case and press Close this case. You will be asked in a few words how it ended: housing secured, moved out of area, no further contact, referred elsewhere. The closing date is set for you.
Closing is not deleting. Everything stays: the notes, the services, the totals. A closed case still counts in last year's report, which is exactly what you want.
How it meets Contact Manager
Contact Manager holds everyone your organization works with in one list, and it shows a quiet indicator when somebody has an open case, linking across to it. It never shows a note, a case title or a program, and the indicator itself is only visible to people who already have access to Case Management. Somebody who cannot open a case cannot learn from Contact Manager that one exists.
Your first session
- Open Case Management Settings. Pick your word for the people you serve. Type your programs, your funders, the services you deliver, and the units you count them in.
- Add three people you are working with right now, from memory. Do not import anything yet.
- Open a case for each one, with a real title and a real presenting need.
- Write one note per case covering the last thing that happened.
- Log one service per case, with a funder attached.
- Open the Service Log and export the CSV, so you have seen what a funder would see.
- Decide whether a caseworker should see every case or only their own, on the same Settings screen. Leaving it as it is means everyone admitted sees everything, which suits most organizations of two or three staff.
- If you want people to be able to reach you without calling, turn the public link on, write two sentences about who you serve, and send the link to yourself first so you see what they see.
That takes about twenty minutes and it is the only reliable way to find out whether your service list and your units are the right ones before you have five hundred records built on the wrong shape.
What is not in this version
Said plainly, so nobody plans around something that is not here yet.
- No AI drafting. Deliberate. The other apps draft donor letters and grant narratives; drafting somebody's case note from other case notes is not a feature we are willing to ship without a great deal more thought.
Getting help
Support is at https://aio-staging-site.pages.dev/support/?app=Case%20Management. If you are weighing this app against a dedicated case management system, tell us what your funders ask you to report and we will tell you honestly whether this covers it.